diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'pod')
| -rw-r--r-- | pod/perldelta.pod | 36 |
1 files changed, 30 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/pod/perldelta.pod b/pod/perldelta.pod index 4fd3ce49bd..90c81de852 100644 --- a/pod/perldelta.pod +++ b/pod/perldelta.pod @@ -386,12 +386,20 @@ process starts. Run C<Configure -h> to find out the full C<-A> syntax. =head2 Enhanced Installation Directories -The installation structure has been enriched to improve the support for -maintaining multiple versions of perl, to provide locations for -vendor-supplied modules and scripts, and to ease maintenance of -locally-added modules and scripts. See the section on Installation -Directories in the INSTALL file for complete details. For most users -building and installing from source, the defaults should be fine. +The installation structure has been enriched to improve the support +for maintaining multiple versions of perl, to provide locations for +vendor-supplied modules, scripts, and manpages, and to ease maintenance +of locally-added modules, scripts, and manpages. See the section on +Installation Directories in the INSTALL file for complete details. +For most users building and installing from source, the defaults should +be fine. + +If you previously used C<Configure -Dsitelib> or C<-Dsitearch> to set +special values for library directories, you might wish to consider using +the new C<-Dsiteprefix> setting instead. Also, if you wish to re-use a +config.sh file from an earlier version of perl, you should be sure to +check that Configure makes sensible choices for the new directories. +See INSTALL for complete details. =head1 Core Changes @@ -672,6 +680,22 @@ change. Bit arithmetics for bit vector scalars (created by vec()) are not limited in their width, you can use the & | ^ ~ operators on such scalars. +There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved +using Configure -Duse64bits and the second one using Configure +-Dusefull64bits. The difference is that the first one is minimal and +the second one maximal. The first one does only as much as is +required to get 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, +using "long longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 +gigabytes (because your pointers most likely are 32-bit); the second +one goes all the way by attempting to switch also longs (and pointers) +being 64-bit. This may create an even more binary incompatible Perl +than -Duse64bits: the resulting executable may not run at all in a +CPU-bit box, or you may have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your +operating system to be 64-bit aware. + +Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bits +nor -Dusefull64bits. + Last but not least: note that due to Perl's habit of always using floating point numbers the quads are still not true integers. When quads overflow their limits (0...18_446_744_073_709_551_615 unsigned, |